_See_ Thucyd. iii, 104.

21 Longin., de Sublim., ix. Section 26. Othen en tae Odysseia
pareikasai tis an kataduomeno ton Omaeron haelio, oo dixa taes
sphodrotaetos paramenei to megethos

22 See Tatian, quoted in Fabric. Bibl. Gr. v. II t. ii. Mr. Mackenzie
has given three brief but elaborate papers on the different writers
on the subject, which deserve to be consulted. See Notes and
Queries, vol. v. pp. 99, 171, and 221. His own views are moderate,
and perhaps as satisfactory, on the whole, as any of the hypotheses
hitherto put forth. In fact, they consist in an attempt to blend
those hypotheses into something like consistency, rather than in
advocating any individual theory.

23 Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.

24 Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.

25 It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory
may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that
of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short
warning, to 'rhapsodize,' night after night, parts which when laid
together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this
is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a
gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a
distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he
informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining
a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole
Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also
to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either
forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first,
alternately the odd and even lines--in short, whatever the passage
required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more
than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could
produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this
singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the
same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to
which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty
years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person
can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could
actu